Guest's blog

Was it Pope Francis who pushed deniers over the edge? Is it the climate negotiations taking place this year?

Matt Ridley, a science denier from the UK who claims to be a “lukewarmer”, has written a Gish gallop worthy of Tim Ball. It’s as if he collected up all the worst conspiracy theories posted on climate denial blog Watts Up With That (WUWT) and rolled them into Quadrant.

Quadrant is a right wing outlet for the extremists. It publishes dumb articles from deniers fairly often. Last week Matt Ridley, a denier turned defamer has written an article (archived here). Anthony Watts has published bits of it on his WUWT blog, too (archived here).

The fossil fuel industry is pulling out all the stops in an effort to derail President Obama’s Clean Power Plan being developed by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act.

The proposed plan, which aims to cut carbon emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, is due to be published as a final rule this summer. Launching a preemptive strike, the coal industry filed suit earlier this year seeking an “extraordinary writ” to stop the rulemaking in its tracks. This would be an unprecedented act of judicial intervention.

A total of 75 black-clad protesters took part in a 25-hour unsanctioned performance organised by activist art collective, Liberate Tate, last weekend. The aim? To urge the gallery to drop its sponsorship deal with BP, one of the world’s largest oil companies. Ellen Booth, one of the performers, describes the experience.

It’s 5:20am in the morning, and I’m sitting on a small folding stool at the side of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. It feels strangely soothing as I sit listening to the musical night time sounds inside the Tate Modern.

The drone of the air conditioning units forms the backdrop to a cacophony of dull repetitive chimes, scraping of chairs and cordons as cleaners work, distant frustrated clanging of management doors, and a ghostly gusting of wind through the corridors and rafters above.

In front of me, a bright line of books reflects the rising morning sun. To the left of these books, a cluster of friends and journalists sleep, sniffling and snoring, surrounding a store of precious water and food.

Texas-based Fortune 500 company Energy Transfer Partners claims to have signed voluntary easement agreements with nearly 60 percent of Iowa landowners in the path of the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline which would transport Bakken crude through the state. But a DeSmog investigation into publicly accessible information has verified less than half that number, casting doubt on Energy Transfer’s claims.

This is a guest post by Charles J. Reid Jr., professor of law at the University of St. Thomas.

It is a line repeated with tiresome regularity in right-wing circles: Pope Francis has no business proposing solutions to the crisis of global climate change. He is not a scientist, they say. He should stick to morals and to matters of faith and doctrine.

Pope Francis' defenders point out that climate change is a moral question. If the destruction of the planet's ecological health is not a moral concern, then what is? But while climate change is certainly a moral issue, it is something much larger and more significant than that. It is a threat to the common good of the world.

Sajid Javid, the newly appointed secretary of state for the department of Business Innovation and Skills, has accepted over £16,600-worth of conference expenses from a think tank that has received funding from Exxon Mobil and the Koch Brothers – according to an Energydesk analysis of the new government ministers involved in energy and climate decisions.

Meanwhile, the new head of the DCLG replacing the controversial Eric Pickles, Greg Clark had no registered donations and Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, under-secretary at DECC, has been involved in some minor political skirmishes.

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE